The shoulds, coulds, maybes, and if onlys will never change your relationship with a #Hijackal. Here’s what will!
I know. You don’t want to be accused, or accuse yourself, of abandoning a person. You especially don’t want to be accused of abandoning a person in need.
#Hijackals are always in need: in need of you to use, misuse, and abuse. Does that make you want to stay? I hope not.
HIGHLIGHTS OF TODAY’S EPISODE:
- Why you may be reluctant to leave a difficult person
- Why you make excuses for another person’s behavior too long
- Steps to take to making clear decisions about a relationship
- How to know when it’s time to fold
- Why you’re not a bad person when you want to leave a person who treats you badly
- Understanding the needs of a #narcissist to win
Would you tell your best friend to stay in a situation like yours? Hmmmm….pause for thought, right?
I’m Dr. Rhoberta Shaler, and I work with individuals and couples from many countries through videoconferencing and I say:
“You cannot remain in a strained relationship with no conceivable healthy future out of a sense of duty, obligation, shame, or guilt.”
Do you understand that?
Will you allow yourself to believe that?
Will you, then, entertain the idea that guilt, obligation, and duty are NOT reasons to stay in an unhealthy relationship?
I hope so.
Today’s episode is a little hard-hitting–maybe–but that may be what you need today. You may be in the excuse-making business, and there is no profit in that.
Got that? THERE IS NO PROFIT IN THE EXCUSE-MAKING BUSINESS!
I want the best for you, and I’m here to help. If you want to talk with me directly one-to-one go to BeAClient.com now.
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I’M HERE TO HELP YOU FIGURE OUT WHAT’S GOING ON AND WHAT YOU WANT TO DO ABOUT IT!
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Dr. Shaler’s Emerging Empowered Community.
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You’ll find that in many other episodes of this podcast, and on my YouTube channel, too.
Enjoy my other podcast, Emotional Savvy: The Relationship Help Show, here, or wherever you like to find your podcasts.
Listen to today’s episode, and, if by chance, you’re still wondering if you have had a #Hijackal in your life, grab my
FREE EBOOK, How to Spot a Hijackal® at Hijackals.com . You need to know what’s up now, so you don’t make mistakes that will hurt you. Grab it!
If you need help with any part of the journey with–and from–a #Hijackal, I’m here for you. Let’s talk soon. I make it easy and accessible for you to have your first one-hour session with me for only $97.
Make positive changes NOW.
In today’s article we are asking if you have ever found yourself staying with a relentlessly difficult, demeaning, devaluing person, out of sheer guilt, obligation or duty. And you’ve got a whole list of woulda, coulda, shouldas maybes, if onlys and that go on and on and you keep hanging on to hope. The hope that the person that you fell in love with or that you wish was the ideal mother or even a decent mother or father would emerge. But it’s you who has to do the changing and you who has to do the realizing that guilt and duty and shame and desire will not change the situation.
No one wants to be accused of abandoning somebody in their time of need. Nobody ever wants to feel that way unless you have some real problem with yourself. But there are times when you just have to wake up and smell the herbal tea and know that maybe you need to have a good look at whether you are enabling the hijackal’s bad behavior.
And you don’t want to be staying with someone out of guilt or obligation or a sense of duty, that is not in your best interest. And I don’t mean that from a selfish point of view as everything has to be in your best interest, but in the best interest of your holistic health, in the best interest of who you are and how you want to show up in the world and how your children are being raised, and how you are able to go to work or be the best mom in the world or dad in the world, or whatever it is. I’m speaking about that.
And if you’ve been in a relationship with a Hijackals, then you know, the exhaustion of being worn down and torn down. And you may be asking yourself whether or not you should go or stay or you may be caught in the guilt and the feeling of oh well I promised and all of that, but remember, they promised themselves and they were not actually being truthful.
And Hijackals are people who hijack relationships for their own purposes. They do it selfishly, to get what they want. And then they proceed to relentlessly scavenge the relationship for power, status and control. That means everything is always going to be your fault. They always have to be right they have to win in every situation they have out of proportion, emotions, they’re always finding fault with you. They seem to lack empathy. They’re not interested in what you feel or think or need. And the only time they’re interested in you is when they really want something, they’re not going to get it so they begin to love bomb you again.
If you know that you’re not being treated well, but you’re always making excuses or rationalizing or justifying the other person’s behavior. This is not good. And if then you’re beating yourself up saying, Well, I don’t want to abandon this person. After all, they’ve had a terrible childhood or they’re not doing well or they don’t have a job. But remember no one who falls in love faster than a narcissist or a Hijackal who is out of a job or doesn’t have a place to live. They play on your emotions.
But I know that you want to be a good person and you don’t want to abandon your partner. But you don’t want to remain in a strained relationship with no conceivable healthy future out of a sense of duty or guilt.
If you do that you are just wearing yourself down saying you don’t matter and your children are going to see that model. Do you want your children to see that other people have the right to wear you down, tear you down or exhaust you? Do you want your children to think it’s okay to be put down, set to the side and not matter? No, we need to balance self-compassion with compassion.
I often say that the hallmark of healthy relationships is found in three things. Equality, reciprocity and mutuality. But you are not going to find any of those with a hijackal they do not play by those rules. So you know immediately if there’s no equality, there’s no reciprocity, and there is no mutuality in your relationship, your relationship is out of balance.
So you have to stop enabling this you have to stop condoning this behavior and it begins within with you saying this is not alright with me. I may have put up with it up until now, but from this moment, it is not all right with me.
And it’s not your job to fix these people is not your job to be so understanding that you put yourself down and under. You are not their therapist and you shouldn’t be. And so it’s very important that you understand that you are not the cause of their issues.
In all of these, always consider your children if you have any. Your children matter. They are watching and learning they’re finding out if you’re important or you matter, which also translates to how they see themselves. And all of those things are happening long before they have capacity for language.
And hopefully, you can begin to see where your boundaries need to be. And if they’re not there, you can start putting them in place. And believe me the Hijackal is unlikely to change. Yes, they may accept some small boundaries. They may be accepting of a new way to communicate a little bit. But in most cases, what happens is over time, they go back to their old ways.
I know I may sound a little harsh but the actual fact is that for Hijackals, there’s no medication. The only thing that can happen is that they could recognize that they’re hurting you and actually want to change. But they have had so many hurts in their early life, that they don’t know how to how to live in a changed fashion. So they may mimic a few changes for a little while, but it’s very hard for them to make fundamental changes.
Now, of course, anyone may exhibit occasional Hijackal behaviors when they’re really angry or pressed or stressed, okay, we can we can work with that. But if someone is just like that all the time, you have to wake up and smell that herbal tea and say, Hey, this is not okay with me. It’s not okay with me on any level. You cannot dance for two. If your partner wants to join in the dance, they need dance lessons , in this instance, counseling or therapy sessions. People who won’t get help, or try to understand your pain, learn new skills, seek not to hurt each other, and won’t get help, are saying that they don’t care about the relationship.
They like it the way it is. Because they get what they want, it is their way or the highway, if you don’t like it, you’re going to be the most awful person on the planet. not worthy of anything. Everything is your fault.
So staying somewhere, when you’re beyond exhausted, is not helpful to anyone and is definitely not going to be helpful to you or to your children. It’s enabling the Hijackal to behave that way. Because if you’re staying out of guilt or a sense of duty or because you promised a person who is nothing like the person you’re stuck with now. You are more than likely to have been love bombed by the hijackal. They would be everything that you want them to be in the beginning. And you end up believing that you have met your soulmate or died and gone to heaven. But it was all an act to get you. And once you are gotten, they show their true selves.
A gentle reminder that the person that love bombed you and swept you off your feet, is not coming back unless he or she really wants something you don’t want to give them. And then you’ll know it really is an act because they only do it when they really want something just like they really wanted you in the beginning.
And if you are an empath, the whole thing can go on for quite a long time. Because you’re thinking, if I love this person enough, if I’m patient enough, if I’m nurturing enough, if I let them know how lucky they are, if I let them know I’ll always stay, they’ll change but of course they never do.
So how long have you been struggling with this? Have you seen any improvement? Don’t kid yourself. I mean real improvement that sustained over time, not momentary improvement when they want something or they’re afraid you’re going to leave them. I mean, real improvement They treat you better over a long period of time. And you need to go and get some help.
And one of the things that I hear from clients is how they go for counselling, hoping that someone that mental health professional therapist counselor will see what’s going on, and finally give it a name and get them the help they need. But what happens is Hijackals are very cagey. They go into a situation if they’re willing to go at all, with the desire to win so they’re going to charm, manipulate, exploit, seduce the mental health professional into believing them.
Almost all my clients have had that experience. Now, the thing is if a mental health professional is not very steeped and experienced in the field of seeing Hijackals they won’t see them for what they are, in the medical model, doctors are told when you hear hooves think horses, not zebras.
Now what that means, of course, is that when somebody comes in and they have these symptoms you think about the most likely cause, think about the most likely diagnosis and explore that and try and fix that. But we all know that after a while, if the doctor keeps hearing horses, you can be suffering, because you have a zebra condition. And so this is same thing that happens with mental health professionals. They may be great at horses, or some other species, but not zebras or Hijackals.
And so, they don’t see it. And so they naturally hear the Hijackal say, Oh, well, I have to put up with this and it’s awesome. And I feel this way and they tell stories that are slanted and somewhat untrue. And then you are told that you are the problem and you should change.
And so when I work with people, of course, I’m looking for zebras and Hijackals. And I know a horse when I see one, I don’t look everywhere for zebras and Hijackals. But I also can recognize a horse that just needs water or feed. So it’s very important to go to someone with the expertise otherwise you can feel really wounded.
And sometimes, you’re already physically ill as a result of being in this relationship. Maybe you’ve got some autoimmune disorders, fatigue, aches and pains, headaches, anxiety, things that are going that are not illnesses, but symptoms of the imbalance in your emotional life. And you need to notice that because that’s the time when you’re going to be most exhausted and you’re not going to go for help.
Add to this the fact that Hijackals love to isolate and marginalize you, keep you all to themselves, so they can define your reality which we call gaslighting. So it may be helpful to join a group/community that is about something that you really enjoy doing. So if you enjoy reading or dancing, get with like minded people and expand your community. You deserve to be honored, you deserve to be respected, you deserve to have those three hallmarks of a healthy relationship, equality, reciprocity, mutuality.
So if you are actually staying out of guilt or obligation or a sense of duty, or because you made a promise to the hijackal, and you are saying in your head, I’m a person who keeps my promises. Yes, that’s wonderful. But you don’t keep promises to the detriment of yourself and your children. I hope that you will act in your own best interest and in the interest of your children in the interest of your well being.
I hope you understand that if you are being concerned about abandoning the relationship, you may as well be abandoning yourself if you stay in. I’m so glad you spent this time with me today. I hope you heard something that touched your heart and empowered you to move forward. You can have the life and relationships that you most want and that begins with you within you today.
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